Product Innovation: Why End Users Can’t Be Afterthoughts in 2023

To drive adoption, digital health solutions must solve real user problems, which means users cannot be an afterthought in developing these solutions. But it’s also important to recognize that end users aren’t the only group whose needs matter. Workable, scalable digital health solutions must also clear the hurdles of technical feasibility and business viability. McKinsey estimates that digital health solutions could cut global healthcare costs by $3 trillion per year by 2030. But we’ll only hit that number if people actually use the digital health solutions we build – that is, if physicians prescribe them and patients use them as prescribed. That means digital health innovators must take end-user needs into account from the very beginning. Unfortunately, most are not yet doing that. In fact, that was one of the things that struck me most at 2022’s HLTH conference in November: for far too many innovators present, end users were an afterthought.